Into Hell
by Pandora Beardsley
Summary: Moteé will do anything to protect the woman she serves-even if that means she must follow her into hell.


**Notes:** After _Revenge of the Sith_ was released in 2005, there was a brief interest amongst handmaiden fans in AUs where Padmé's handmaidens, or Captain Typho, accompanied her to Mustafar, as they did in earlier versions of the script. (It should come as little surprise that it did not go well for them.) Several people mentioned that they were working on stories-but as far as I know, none of them were ever posted online.

So since I wanted it done, I had to do it myself. It just took a while.

Oh, and I'm not sorry.

* * *

 **Into Hell**

Before I saw Mustafar, it was only the burning sun of a planet in one of my dreams. Or at least, I think I dreamt about it. I was in a room in a city inside a huge, gliding space ship. I could look out the window and see its sloping seacreature belly, and the exploded firework glitter of stars. It was a dream, so I knew all their names. Then, later, I stood at the window in a nearby parlour. I pushed aside the shroud white curtains and saw the planet below. I could even see the constant glowing bursts of the volcanoes. I touched the window, and it was, for the moment I could feel it, fever-breath warm.

When I turned around, I was in my bedroom. My bed was much bigger than I knew it had been before, and a plush white lace chair floated next to it. My legs had been made of wood, and painted a bright, happy, nursery blue. A door had been broken into the back wall, and on the other side was a classroom that looked like, almost like, the one at the university where my father taught most of his classes. The planet, the hell-world, was gone.

I hadn't thought of that dream in years, but I remembered it when I looked out the viewport on Amidala's ship and saw the world we had just arrived on. There it was: the glowing, boiling, heaving rivers of lava, and kilometers away to the north, the black towers of volcanoes. The air was so smudged and heavy with heat I couldn't believe anyone, or anything, could breathe it, though I have learned even this world has its natives.

Amidala stared out the window as the autopilot guided the ship towards the lights of a landing pad. I could see what looked like a fortress, which must have been the headquarters for the mining operations, looming just overhead on the hillside.

"Oh, dear," the protocol droid, C3PO, whispered close behind me.

Amidala was slumped down in her chair, her braid—her playful, schoolgirl whip braid—fallen over her shoulder. She blinked, and her eyes were shiny with tears. I could hardly bear to see that, even though it wasn't a surprise. She had been inside her locked room for days, crying and fretting. She hadn't wanted us to know, but we had. It was my position, my duty, and my life to know those things. I know Ellé would say the same.

"Milady," I said. "Are you certain this is what you want?"

"Yes, Miss Padmé," C3PO hurried to say. "If you will forgive me for saying so, this is a dreadful place. I would think it was hell if I were programmed to believe in such things. And you have the baby to think about-"

Because I knew what she would say, I had already checked my blaster. I carried the updated Royal Pistol model-the one that looks like a small, silver-sleek knife, the one that looks pretty, not deadly. But I had only used it during my training exercises, and I had never set it to kill. I didn't have to. Most of the time, I was the lady-in-waiting other people assumed—when they saw me at all—I had to be.

"I have to do this, Threepio," she said. Her voice shivered with tears. "He's here. He's here, and I have to find him before—before it's too late."

"Milady," I said.

And wished I sounded as gentle, as loving, as Dormé always had. I could only squeeze Amidala's shoulder, and feel her fist-clenched muscles. She hadn't heard me. She went on looking out the window as the ship made the landing, as it bumped and settled down on its spidertiny feet. The engines sighed with a long, soft hiss. Amidala had already stood up. She rushed out of the cabin, and then I heard her footsteps thud down the ramp.

She must have been eight months pregnant, but her stomach had stayed small, if not quite small enough to keep a secret under her skirts. My mother would have told me that happens, on occasion, with first pregnancies, and that (she would have smiled, and I wouldn't be certain if it was amused or a smirk, before she added some medical details I wouldn't remember for very long) Amidala was lucky.

I went back to the window and watched Amidala appear on the platform. The air was filled with bright, snapping firebug sparks. But she seemed all right. I looked past her, and up the slope at the mining fortress. C3PO shuffled behind me, and his eyes would have glowed with alarm. I didn't much care, so long as he stayed quiet. I bit down into my lower lip, and my breathing throbbed in my ears.

Then: a man was coming down from the fortress. He was tall, and wore a long, ragged, dusty black cloak. I couldn't see him very well yet, but he seemed familiar—

Amidala was running up to meet him, and collapsing into his arms.

"This explains things, " I said, mostly to myself.

"Don't worry, Miss Moteé," C3PO said. I turned away from the window to see my reflection smeared and floating in his metal skin. "Miss Padmé will be—quite safe. No matter what he has done, I'm sure he would never harm her."

The man was Anakin Skywalker. Amidala's lover, her secret, her husband, and (she had said one night after several glasses of wine, when she thought she was alone) _her truest love_. We had all thought he must have died with the other Jedi. But here he was, and I could only watch as Amidala threw herself against him like a moth, and he caught her.

Outside the window, Amidala stepped back, but not away, from Anakin Skywalker. I could hear the flutter of her voice, but I couldn't make out what she was saying. C3PO had shuffled, in his usual stiff and proper way, back into the white hallway. The air in the cabin was already warmer, like the inside of a dark, locked closet. I looked back outside. Amidala shook her head, and her braid slapped against her back. I knew I should wait, and that it was what she wanted, but I walked out into the hallway. I had already gone against her wishes for the first time, and this time, it was easier.

 _This is personal_ , she had told Captain Typho back on Coruscant.

Ellé had looked at me while Typho protested. She hadn't needed to speak—I could tell from her eager, sweetheart look that she was ready for, that she wanted, the moment she thought was at hand. But I had still agreed with Typho when he told her it was best if she stayed behind with him.

Amidala had left the hatchway open, and the air was smothering and heavy as a blanket. I could feel it in my eyes and mouth. But I could breathe, without having to think about it, and I stopped and stood there. I patted at the blaster hidden away in my skirts, but I didn't believe, not truly, not yet, that I would need it. I didn't even intend (or maybe I only want to think that) to leave the ship.

Amidala looked up at Anakin, at _Jedi Skywalker_ : "But Anakin, I don't need any of that. I never needed you to be the most powerful Jedi. I only wanted your love."

"Love," he said, and his smile was tight. "Love isn't enough to protect you, Padmé. It never was. Only my new powers can do that.

"Anakin, please! Listen to yourself!"

Her voice was suddenly too high, and stumbling, and desperate. Her hands fluttered at her sides. I didn't move, but I could see her so closely, so well, as though it were the last time. Her eyes were glowing and moist, and her skin was flushed in a humiliated, sick blush from the heat. Her voice burned up in it. She was small, a little girl with teacup porcelain wrists, and Anakin towered over her.

Now, he sighed, and his voice was-oddly considering how gawky-sullen he had been the other times I saw him-annoyed and _pitying_. He _pitied_ her. "You don't understand. I did what I had to, to protect you. It was all for you."

"Don't do this!" she said. "Anakin, you're a good person." (And I couldn't laugh, but I wanted to. Oh, I wanted to.) "It's not too late. Come away with me, and-"

"We don't need to run away," he said. "Not anymore. Haven't you been listening to me? Once I overthrow the Emperor, the galaxy will belong to us. It will belong to you. We can make it the peaceful, better place you've always wanted-"

Amidala shook her head. Her hands tightened into fists, and: "That isn't the world I want! Anakin, don't you know me at all?"

"So you've turned against me too!" he said.

"No, Anakin!" she said. "I love you! Come with me now. Before it really is too late. We can find a remote world, somewhere we'll be safe, to raise our child, and-"

"Whore!" he said in a trapped-rat snarl. "Don't lie to me again!"

 _I love you_ , she must have breathed out.

He stretched out his hand, and she only gasped once before she started to choke. Her eyes were bulged and shocked wide, and she clutched at her throat. Her mouth was open, but she could only make a tickticking sound. Her tongue was swollen-fat and slick with saliva. Yes, I do know, because I felt it. I had to touch my own throat. Anakin stood there and glared as he closed her throat, and smashed her windpipe. It had only been several seconds.

Perhaps I had time to remember, during those slow four, five, and then seconds, another evening over a year before. I had just returned to the apartment from her offices at the Senate, where I had been the Senator for several hours so she could be with him, with Anakin. Amidala stood on the balcony looking out into the sky, and the last ragged, wedding veil clouds above the tops of the buildings. She didn't hear me come in, even when I turned on a lamp. She wore a dark furry-velvet dressing gown, and her hair was loose. The water whispered and glittered in the fountain.

"Milady?" I said, my voice suddenly too loud and false. I watched the floor, and the sharp tips of my shoes, as I walked towards her.

I wore the elaborate armored purple gown, with cream-yellow lotusbuds embroidered on the underskirt, that she would never actually wear, with the matching moon lady headdress. It may have been her dress, but it wasn't enough to make me look like her—and it certainly would not have fooled her colleagues, especially Senator Organa, who may have actually been her _close friend_. She must have known this. I did. I will admit this wasn't how I had imagined, and daydreamed, I would protect her.

But I never resented her for it. Never. You can believe me or not, as you choose, but I would have done anything she asked of me.

She hadn't heard me. She was still looking through the buildings for the tall, pointed tower at the center of the Jedi temple. Her husband still lived there with his former master when he was on Coruscant. That is, he lived there when he wasn't sneaking into Amidala's bedroom, and I shouldn't mention the time they met at her lake house on Naboo—

"He's gone," she said, and I started before I saw C3PO standing with her. His plating had a sea-pirate treasure gleam in the last, fading light. "He hadn't even been here a day, and he's off to the Outer Rim. But then, he could stay here for a day, or even a week, and it still wouldn't matter. It's never enough—"

It's true that she hardly knew him. They must have spent only several months together during the three years they were married, and I knew her. Each time they saw each other, it was another honeymoon. But even if she only thought she loved him, that was enough. I understand that much, finally, if nothing else.

Then he lowered his hand, and she sank down to her knees, and then she fell, slow and floating, over onto her side. I didn't have time to think as I came down the ramp, through a burst of hot, fly-bite golden sparks, and into hell. I will never remember the moment I took my blaster out and switched it from stun to kill. My fingers were numbed, as though they were made from wood. I was numb. I didn't look away from Anakin Skywalker and Amidala. I saw, or thought I saw, several bruised fingerprint-petals opening on her neck.

Perhaps I should have been afraid. I didn't know, and I still don't, what Anakin (what the little boy I saw at the victory parade as I tossed handfuls of snow-rose petals and shrieked with the other children) had become. But he had never seen me before, and I knew that wouldn't change now.

Amidala hadn't moved, but I heard her whimper. Once, but that was enough. He hadn't killed her, then, but it wasn't enough to save him.

Because she might have loved him, but I did not.

Anakin was still watching her when I fired. The sound was punched me like a fist, and I fired again, and again, while the blaster shook in my hands.

"Anakin!" a man's voice, with a well-bred, prim, Coruscanti accent, shouted behind me, and I would have been surprised if I had been able to feel anything.

He must have been dead with the second shot, but I fired one last time. I dropped the blaster and rushed over to Amidala. She was still breathing, and her eyelids twitched in the midst of a dream. When I touched her forehead, and her throat, and the drumbeat echo of her pulse, she was warm, but I couldn't be sure it wasn't only the oven-hot air around us. Her hand was limp when I took it, turned into a glove for one of the balls at Theed Palace. I pressed my other hand against her stomach, and felt the baby—one of two babies—shift and move its legs around inside its tiny room.

"It's all right, Moteé," the man said. "You did what you had to."

Or as he would tell me later: _You did what I should have done_.

"She won't believe that," I said, and my voice was slow and muddy-thick and dragging as I realized what I have always known since. "She never will."

I looked over at Obi-Wan Kenobi. He crouched several feet away next to Anakin Skywalker, next to the body with the burnt holes I had blasted into him. Blasters are neat in that way, I thought, for the first, real time. No blood. There was a burst of lava off to the side, and the platform vibrated under my knees. My hair was heavy and slick with sweat, and my skin glowed with heat. I could hardly see Kenobi, and I couldn't even guess at what he might have felt. It took me several minutes, and too long, to realize that I had started crying. The tears had already dried up on my face.

Because she loved him, she would never understand what I did. But I saved her, even if it was only for five years. She died on the remote forest-island on Naboo where she had been living with Dormé—faithful, loving, perfect Dormé. I could have visited her, but I never dared. I did know that she still wore her old gowns, all those dresses I had looked after, and wrote to her parents, several select colleagues, and a friend from her junior legislature days, even after she faded and starved away into a ghost. She never wept for the children, the boy and the girl, she had been separated from moments after they were born, to protect them from the Emperor. She only ever wept for him.

 _I would have done anything for her_ , Dormé told me at the state funeral, as we stood in the crowds watching the procession. _But I couldn't make her want to live_.

Then she looked away, and I could see the glass tears glowing on her cheeks in the light from the flickering candles. She didn't want to see me, and I understood. But I won't dwell upon that, or upon my own disgrace.

No, I will only remember sitting next to Amidala in the ship's med-pay as it moved through the grey smoke of the atmosphere and back into space. The light was too bright, too glaring-white, and the whole ship smelled like the dust from Amidala's gowns. The medlights over her bunk kept up a constant, fever-red blink. Kenobi had contacted Typho for me once we were in hyperspace, since I refused to leave her side. The hell-world, Mustafar, was gone, and millions of kilometers behind us, when she woke up. When she saw me, her eyes widened. I tried to smile, but I couldn't move my stiff, sore lips.

"Moteé," she said. Her voice was rusted, and she had to pause, and swallow, before she could speak again. "What happened to Anakin? Is he…"

(C3PO had helped Kenobi gather up his body while I cared for Amidala. He was wrapped up inside his cloak in one of the storage areas.)

"Don't worry about him, Milady," I said. I hunched my shoulders together, but I was still so shivering, painfully cold. The ship was climate controlled, but it felt like the inside of a freezer unit, and I didn't know why. Amidala frowned, but not because she had guessed what I was only beginning to know about what I had done. I wouldn't know for another month that I would even have to see, and endure, it when I dreamed.

She closed her eyes, and her head flopped to the side. "There is still good in him. You don't believe me, but I know. There is still good…"

Yes, I thought she was deluded. But I only waited until her breathing slowed, and she was asleep again. Her mouth twitched up in a smile, and she looked innocent, still good and innocent, and I had to turn away. When that wasn't enough, I squeezed my eyes shut. That didn't help. I could still feel the smooth silver permasteel of the blaster in my hand, the blaster I had left behind on the platform. Once again, it shivered when I lifted it to fire.

Once again, I watched the bolts burn through him. He turned. His eyes were glassy-blank and shocked open. He fell. I wanted to think of something, anything else. But I could only see it happen again, and again, and again.


End file.
